Geschreven door Marijn de Geus | March 15, 2018
In 2017, big steps were taken in the area of artificial intelligence. Developments like the internet of things and self-driving trucks change the future of professions and emphasize the importance of communication skills. ‘Lifelong learning’ is also applicable to soft skills. Based on these observations, I will make five predictions about communication training in 2018.
For a long time, communication skills were seen as less important and impossible to learn. However, jobs change and with the societal and scientific developments of the last century soft skills started to become more and more important. Communication became part of a lot more jobs and people started to make a difference by communicating effectively. This is why group oriented communication training became a widespread phenomenon. Today, communication training is developing further, because of the accessible knowledge on conversation techniques, the large percentage of jobs where soft skills are important, criticism on the efficiency of ‘classical’ communication training and the dgitization of society as a whole. Five developments stand out:
- Training becomes modulated and adaptive
“Three or four years of education that is the same for everyone? It seems to me that in thirty years that will be completely outdated” stated Marieke Blom, chief economist at ING. “It is smarter to follow the training programs that you need, so you can directly apply them to your work”. Thus, a manager who already scored well on giving feedback in her assessment, will not be offered a training program in feedback afterwards. She will instead be offered a training in for instance a style of managing in which she scores a bit lower.
- Speech and emotion recognition enrich assessments
It is clear that soft skills assessments can become a lot more efficient. While live assessments are replaced by coaches who assess the recordings of thousands of participants, as we see at Rabobank, the next development is already knocking on our doors: software that analyzes recordings by interpreting speech, posture and mimics. In this way, the participant immediately receives personalized indications about their communication skills. We have already started with some promising experiments, perhaps 2018 will be the break-through year.
- Measurability and data becomes the standard
When looking at previous predictions, measuring soft skills will be a natural next step. To train adaptively, you need to be able to determine individual communication skills. More data will also open up more possibilities for HR analytics. Think of a central up-to-date overview of individual skill levels, educational interventions based on data and being able to benchmark departments or locations. This all means that soft skills will not be as ‘soft’ anymore.
- The smartphone takes central stage
The smartphone has become essential to our lives, much more so than the computer or tablet. I already wrote it last year: why is it not possible to train on smartphones? The developments that I mentioned back then, will only become more influential in 2018: the number of mobile employees is growing, people expect answers at their fingertips and the productivity of mobile training programs is higher compared to computer training programs.
- Training will be more push instead of pull
A somewhat surprising prediction perhaps, since e-learning facilitates learning in your own time and space (‘pull’). However, the complete freedom to organize this learning turns out to be difficult to handle. Personal development might have a high priority, but for a participant it is often not an urgent matter. This makes it easy to postpone or leave programs unfinished. In our experience, everyone involved in the training process appears to take advantage from serious agreements. This can include mandatory training, but also training in certain places at certain times. We also see that this results in higher participation.
Communication skills are very important in many different professions. We might have to leave mathematics to computers and robots, but in communication we are still some steps ahead. Machines are increasingly able to assist us, but the communicative aspect of things is not completely replaced and if these predictions come true, I do not see that happening anytime soon.
Curious to find out if Rabobank is happy with online assessments and what employees think? Download the case study!